Youth work planning for the long term is vital for organizations and youth programs of any size.

This doesn’t mean that you need a lot of target-based youth work provision that only focuses on numbers or ‘butts on seats’. It means that by setting a few goals, you’ll have more focused, cohesive and holistic youth work, which will in turn provide better support and opportunities for your youth, volunteers and other youth workers.

There are two types of long-term youth work planning:

Long-range Planning

This is a way of planning that focuses on the future vision of your organization or youth program. The question it asks and answers is ‘What do I want this organization/program to look like in ‘X’ amount of time (usually 3-5 years)?’

Long-range youth work planning focuses on creating the vision for the organization or program. While it can be more vague than annual or operational planning, it creates aims, SMART objectives and timelines for future development.

Strategic Planning

Strategic youth work planning focuses on how you’ll practically achieve the vision you’ve determined for your program or organization. The question it asks and answers is ‘What are we actually going to do and how can we measure it, to ensure our organization/program looks like ‘this (insert vision here)’ in ‘X’ amount of time?’

Strategic youth work planning therefore focuses on the guidelines, policies and procedures needed to achieve goals and realize the program or organization’s vision.

A new calendar year is approaching, or maybe you’re reading this because your new school year or fiscal year is approaching. All are good times to consider planning. Even though the types of youth work planning above are considered long-term, you can use the principles to create school term, quarterly or annual plans for your youth work programs.

Over time we’ll provide more ways to plan, more comprehensive planning options and more examples, but over the next two Wednesdays we’ll provide a basic 2-page strategic planning worksheet to help get you started – you can find part 2 here and part 3 here.

Question: Do you think strategic youth work planning is important? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Here are the other 7 items I include in my youth session plans – not only do they help me plan accurately for most eventualities in a session, they provide a log for monitoring and evaluation that helps with my reporting for internal and external stakeholders.

Aims – The goal for each activity (e.g. Ball Name Game – Each person to learn the names of everyone else in the group)

Teaching Syle or Group Facilitation Method – Write down if it’s a group discussion, individual activity, worksheet or lecture-style activity. This helps me to mix up the activities for each youth work session, ensuring we don’t just have discussions or only activities

Learning Style – We’ll talk more about youth learning styles in coming posts, but I would identify if an activity was designed for auditory, visual or kinesthetic learners. This helps keep activities relevant for all learners, ensuring maximum learning potential

Risk Assessment – Does the activity need a risk assessment? If so, you can link to the document that includes the risk assessment

Notes – A section to jot down ideas that you might want to make sure you cover during the activity

Session Evaluation – A youth work session evaluation should be done to evaluate each activity at the end of the session with the other staff available (and youth evaluations) to inform future programs and keep records for reporting.

Question: What do you include in your youth work session plans? Let us and other youth workers know in the comments below.

E is for Evaluate

Come back and evaluate the success or areas for improvement within your goal and target setting. For example:

I want to increase attendance at my youth group by 20% by May 15 next year. You can evaluate both during and at the end of your SMARTER target’s timeline. Therefore, in December of the previous year you might evaluate how close you are to achieving that goal. Maybe you increased by 18% – decide what worked well and what didn’t and how you might achieve the other 2% growth by May. Or maybe you increased your attendance by 50% and it’s time to set a new goal for May. Monitoring and Evaluation is a fluid process and should be happening regularly in your youth work.

R is for Reassess or Re-evaluate (it can also mean Record)

Once you reach the time allotted for achieving your goal (remember T in SMART is for time-bound), take the time to reassess the goals for your program, your youth work and any personal goals you may have had as a practitioner.

Even if you didn’t reach your goals, take the time to re-evaluate what went well and what could be improved (use the SMART acronym to help you identify areas for improvement: was it Specific, Measurable, etc.) and how you might achieve the goal the next time around.

You might also find that this is the time (as well as throughout the process) to record your youth work in a report form, case studies or other measuring tool to identify which goals you reached, which you did not and why. This helps create evidence-based programs which will give support to funding applications and requests to continue with programs within your organization.

Reassess all of your goals at the end of the time you have given yourself to achieve each one. Record the outcomes in a report or spreadsheet. Did you grow your youth group by 20% by May of the following year? What are some case studies of the change that was affected by your program in the lives of your young people during that time?

Creating SMARTER targets will help you work within a framework for creating, managing, evaluating and recording goals for your youth group or youth program.

If you would like further support in creating SMARTER targets or helping you with the monitoring and evaluation of your project, please check out our consultancy services or contact us to schedule a free 30-minute virtual consultation.

Question: How have you used SMARTER targets for your youth work? Has it helped? Let us know in the comments below.

It’s that time again – time to create SMART targets for your youth work. Whether it’s back to school (for those in the geographical North) or planning the upcoming Summer hols (for our geographically Southern friends), it’s time for a plan. Maybe for a few months, a school term or the entire year, but it’s definitely time to think and plan ahead.

Even if you’re not much of a planner, someone (your boss, parents, the youth themselves), somewhere (in the board of directors meeting, during your weekly supervision sessions, in your annual performance review), probably wants to see your plans and maybe even wants to know how it fits into your wider vision… and theirs.

It’s very possible that you have heard of the SMART target acronym before when setting goals or targets. We’re sharing it with you again (or maybe for the first time) because it works. It helps give you a framework for setting goals that are measurable so that later on you can provide evidence of the youth work that you did and things you accomplished.

Most youth workers in my experience – even in the (often) warm and fuzzy setting of faith-based organizations – will need to show evidence for their work at some point. Maybe you have a board of directors you answer to, donors who gave money to your project or maybe you need funding and want to attract donors (read: SMART target planning may help you get more money – who doesn’t need more money for their projects?!).

Having clear plans and goals as well as evidence to show what you have accomplished so far is always helpful in finding and maintaining funds, as well as job security when meeting with the people who sign off on your paycheck or programs. Even if planning strategically is not a requirement for you and your organization, creating SMART targets will help you become a better youth worker who is able to affect maximum change in your young people if planned out properly.

So let’s get down to how to create SMART targets. There are several options for what each letter stands for – find the ones that work best for you here:

S is for Specific – make each target or goal in your plan specific. Be very clear and intentional about what you are trying to achieve.

Growing the youth group vs. To increase the youth group by 20%

M is for Measurable – make each target or goal something that can be tangibly measured, either in numbers or percentages

Have a big youth retreat vs. Have a youth retreat with 80 youth in attendance

A is for Achievable – make each target or goal something that can be achieved through measurement.

Raise money for a new bus vs. Raise $5,000 for a new bus

R is for Realistic – make each target or goal something that is based on realistic expectations.

Have a youth retreat with 80 youth in attendance – the last five retreats had 15 youth vs. Have a youth retreat with 40 youth in attendance – a more achievable amount based on previous years

T is for Time-bound – give each target or goal a time frame to be completed/reviewed by.

Increase program attendance by 20% vs. Increase program attendance by 20% by May 15 next year

If you don’t know what you are doing or where you are going with your youth group, how can you really know when you’ve achieved what you set out to do?

Question: What SMART targets do you plan to set for your programs? What other methods do you use for planning your youth work? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.